Wednesday, 28 September 2011

Lessons in Love

Take
Brawny and I. You’ve paired the woman who
can’t pick a nail colour out of her 80-plus polishes with the man who makes Harvey Dent look
impulsive. We live in a miniature-scale nightmare.

But
then sometimes we both have the exact same thought. One example of this is our
Wedding ceremony. Like a bizarre episode of The
Wonder Twins, when it came to picking a ceremony we both sat up straight,
and looked each other straight in the eye.

“Jonathan,”
we chorused.

The
chap in question is the Vicar at Brawny’s family church, and the reason for our
joint moment of clarity. He’s such a lovely guy that we couldn’t imagine anyone
else marrying us. And that’s how it works: when something makes sense, you do
it.

So
imagine my surprise when I bumped into a friend in town who had recently been
married by Jonathan. As soon as I said that we were looking to book his church,
she offered some sage advice.

“You
need to book ASAP,” she said. “If you’ve got your heart set on it, make it the first
thing you book.”

Fantastic.
I pictured walking down the aisle in front of the stained glass, affirming my
vows in front of a close friend of the family I was joining…

“Oh,
but you’ll need to go to marriage lessons.”

Eh?

“Yeah,
Jonathan will ask you things just to make sure you’re compatible and stuff.”

I
was confused. Was it going to be like one of those love quizzes in
Cosmopolitan? Or do we simply sit under a giant Love Calculator? WARNING: Under
50% compatibility means your relationship will beTERMINATED.

Though
I know where all Brawny’s freckles are, his favourite film and the face he
makes when he’s about to sneeze (of which I can do a wicked impression), that’s
probably not the sort of things we’ll be asked.

So
what makes you compatible? I’m pretty sure that although I may have liked the
same books, films and music as any of my ex-boyfriends, we obviously weren’t very
well suited. One partner didn’t share my religious views, one didn’t want the
same sort of relationship as I did, and several couldn’t keep it in their
pants didn’t view boundaries in the same way as me. Those issues never reared
an ugly head with Brawny – or if they did, they were immediately scuppered by
our willingness to see things from each others’ point of view.

Jonathan
was kind enough to drop a pamphlet through the door which contained not only a
few hymn suggestions and biblical passages but lots of little ‘reasons’ to marry.
I’m going to hold off on those now, because we’ve got an actual meeting with Jonathan
soon and I’d love to see how it goes and report back.